State Launches Program to Curb Juvenile Crime

State elected officials launched an unprecedented statewide effort to head off juvenile crime Monday by targeting at-risk youths, but despite strong bipartisan support, this first step was a small one.

The fledgling High Risk Youth and Public Safety Program--based on a 12-year research effort in Orange County--was a victim of the Capitol’s recent budget wars. Partisan squabbles cost it more than 60% of the $10 million originally designated for the statewide kickoff.

Still, supporters from law enforcement and both political parties joined Gov. Pete Wilson at a news conference Monday to issue praise and high hopes for an innovative program that cut juvenile recidivism by half during its initial Orange County tests.

“This measure is the kind of common-sense approach on which we can all agree,” Wilson said at a news conference in which he signed the Democrat-sponsored implementation bill. “Children under age 10 are the fastest-growing segment of California. They are growing up fast and too many are growing up mean.”

The Orange County study--initiated in 1985--concluded that 8% of youthful offenders are responsible for more than half of all juvenile crime. It also established a profile of those dangerous youths.

It said most are ages 13 or 14, are from dysfunctional or abusive families, have active drug or alcohol problems, are doing poorly in school and associate with similarly troubled youths.

For the last year, Orange County has targeted a small segment of that high-risk population with an intensive interdiction effort aimed at diverting their lives from crime. The program mobilizes an array of social workers and government services--such as drug treatment, school counseling and mental health assistance--not only for the targeted juvenile but also all members of the youth’s family.

This year, officials reported a 50% drop in juvenile arrests among the targeted population. The effort will be mirrored in counties statewide this year under the legislation authored by Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) and signed Monday by Wilson.

Supporters say the costly and still-experimental effort will pay off in the long run.

“The reason the whole thing is worthwhile is that this is the group that creates over 50% of all the juvenile offenses we deal with in juvenile court,” said Michael A. Schumacher, chief of the Orange County Probation Department. “So if we can affect this group in any meaningful way, the ultimate impact will be enormous.”

The Lockyer bill authorizes $3.6 million for the statewide program, down from about $10 million earmarked for the program before budget talks broke down in July and legislators agreed to a largely status-quo level of funding for state programs and departments.

Supporters have indicated that it would cost at least $75 million to make the program complete. Even in Orange County, Schumacher said, the county today reaches just 40 at-risk youths out of an estimated 500 in the area.

“A start is start,” he said. “We are grateful for it.”